MBV 3D = MDP*

Contains spoilers for My Bloody Valentine

There are a lot of great and interesting movies doing the rounds at the moment: Revolutionary Road, The Wrestler, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire, Milk, Frost/Nixon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Bride Wars (just kidding).

With all these in mind, for some reason I ended up going to see My Bloody Valentine (in 3D no less – not that you’d know it. Most 2D films offer more 3D thrills than My Bloody Valentine).

As is usual with films like this, it’s not really worth launching upon a lengthy critique of its narrative. My Bloody Valentine (MBV) is essentially a B-movie – I certainly didn’t hand over my hard-earned cash and expect something penned by David Hare or Simon Beaufoy. However, what I did expect was a load of schlocky, campy, nonsensical fun. And for a moment, MBV threatened to deliver...

There’s one sequence in the movie that is almost worth the price of admission itself: without going into mind-numbing detail, it involves a motel-managing dwarf, a butt naked Betsy Rue, a nasty trucker and a pickaxe in the head. The rest of the movie doesn’t even come close to what the critic Anthony Scott of the New York Times describes as the ‘zesty crudity’ of the B-movie:

...the cheesy, campy, guilty pleasures that used to bubble up with some regularity out of the B-picture ooze of cut-rate genre entertainment... now dominate the A-list, commanding the largest budgets and the most attention from the market-research and quality-control departments of the companies that manufacture them... For the most part, the schlock of the past has evolved into star-driven, heavily publicized, expensive mediocrities...

Even when filmmakers take on the subject of the B-movie, the results can be patchy: look at Death Proof, possibly the most crashingly dull B-movie ever made (the traditional B-movie certainly never contained acres of boringly pointless dialogue). Planet Terror is much more like it – supremely daft, the film even dispenses with core parts of its narrative by pretending that whole reels of the film have gone missing, which means it can jump straight into the action without titting about with hectares of talky exposition (something that Death Proof is stacked to the back teeth with).

When a B-movie is done well – Frank Darabont’s The Mist, for example, or even Kubrick’s The Shining – it can even transcend the usual A-list dramatic fare (Revolutionary Road anyone? The Reader?). I love a good B-movie – the problem with MBV was that it was only half a good B-movie – when the only thing that’s keeping you awake is the sight of Tom Atkins’s jaw flying past your shoulder, you know you’re in trouble.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* MDP = Mostly Dog Poo.

In The Crap

There’s an article here by Toby Young that essentially talks about this:

As a reviewer, I always accepted that film is a collaborative medium, but until I started spending time with film-makers I had no idea just how true that is. It is most obvious when it comes to the screenplay. It is fairly well known that the officially credited writers of a film are rarely, if ever, the only authors of the shooting script, but I was still shocked when a famous screenwriter confided he'd been Oscar-nominated for a film he hadn't written a single word of...

I now realise that describing someone as the "director" - or "screenwriter" or "producer" - is completely misleading, in that there are no clearly circumscribed areas of responsibility on a film set. Those official titles are, at best, starting points, guideposts that sometimes point you in the right direction, but equally often lead you astray.

Slogging my way through In The Cut, a single question became immediately apparent: if film truly is a collaborative process as Mister Young states in his article (and I’m not suggesting for a second that it isn’t), then how on earth does something like In The Cut limp its way onto celluloid? Didn’t anyone involved with the making of this film have the presence of mind to say, “Uh, Jane, sweetie – that film you’ve directed? It’s utter guff.” Perhaps everyone was intimidated by the Oscar that Ms Campion no doubt takes everywhere with her, but even so, that’s not really an excuse. If you believe Toby Young, then a film can be made or destroyed in the edit. With that in mind, just imagine the raw material that the editor Alexandre de Francheschi had to work with – it doesn’t really bear thinking about it.

Just what makes In The Cut so toe curlingly bad? Talking about film as a collaborative process is all very well, but if you’re going to start with a script that’s essentially rubbish, then no amount of blood, nudity, swearing and pretentiousness is going to help you. The protagonist Frannie is as drearily passive as a wet weekday morning, where the male characters veer between being either cardboard cut outs or gross stereotypes. Campion can sprinkle the finished product with as many moody atmospherics and pretentious asides as she likes, but she can’t disguise the clunky, paint-by-numbers plot that telegraphs its ending a good hour before it occurs. In other words, you can’t make a skyscraper out of housebricks – and the building that In The Cut most closely resembles is a brick outhouse.

Perhaps the fact that Meg Ryan takes her clothes off might divert attention from the mound of rubbishness clunking about on screen?

Er, nope.

As above, the one thing that constantly staggers me with films such as this is that it has taken a small army of professional, intelligent people with an Oscar winning director (supposedly) at the helm to get the thing made. So why is it so bad? There has to a reason: too many cooks? Or not enough? Maybe there weren’t enough suits involved (Toby Young’s criteria for getting a half decent film made)? Who knows? And more to the point, who cares? All I know is that some collaborations work and others don’t – and you can safely put In The Cut in the latter column.

Moan-a-thon

Now that my Red Planet and RISE submissions are out of the way, I can get back to doing what I do best: watching a whole load of really crap TV. Hooray! And first out of the blocks is Hole in the Wall – the ‘gameshow’ where celebrities have to force themselves Tetris-like through a variety of holes or risk being dunked in the drink. I lasted five minutes before I became acutely aware that the show is merely a ploy to drain your IQ so you are mentally unable to switch channels, thereby ensuring that you stay tuned for Strictly Come Dancing (or Celebrity Ham Twirling as it’s known here at Chipster Towers). Shows like Hole in the Wall make you yearn for the golden age of television, where Mr Blobby and the malevolent evil that is Cilla Black presided colossus-like over the Saturday night schedule. As Dale Winton says, “Join me next week for more celebrities and more holes.” Can’t wait.That said, Hole in the Wall wasn’t the stupidest thing I’ve seen on teevee recently – that honour goes to Guy Richie’s Revolver, which wasn’t of course made for television, but hey, who's splitting hairs? The only essential difference between Hole in the Wall and Revolver is that Hole in the Wall is knowingly dumb, whereas Revolver is dumb masquerading as clever, which is in fact even worse than plain old dumb (with Luc Besson contributing to proceedings, you know you’re in for a veritable festival of stupid anyway). Quite what the screenplay is aiming to say is anyone’s guess: characters supposedly inhabit each other’s heads to the point of mind numbing existential tedium, ill-thought out symbols litter the film like so much landfill (twelve dollar bills, half a crucifixion, endlessly boring games of chess), Ray Liotta chews up the scenery (in his underpants mostly, not really my definition of viewing pleasure), and there are swathes of entirely pointless pieces of animation. I was going to mention the long and pointless voiceover and the acres of repetitive dialogue, but I simply can’t be bothered (is it just me, or does the lost art of the voiceover seem to be making a resurgence of late? Most everything I see at the moment features a metric tonne of the stuff: Lost in Austen anyone? The major unifying thread of all the shows I’ve seen recently to feature voiceover is that it’s just not needed).

So, to summarise: Revolver – the only film in living memory that would have been improved with an appearance from Andi Peters in a skin tight Lycra bodysuit.

Brooked

Contains spoilers for Mr Brooks.

Since the 1970s, the writing team of Bruce Evans and Raynold Gideon have sought to create the perfect script with each collaboration. Academy Award winner Kevin Costner believes they achieved their goal with their most recent project, Mr Brooks.

“Costner was incredibly complimentary,” remembers Bruce Evans, co-writer and director of the upcoming Mr Brooks... “He said, “I’ve read hundreds of scripts in my life and only four perfect ones. This is one of them.” (Script, Volume 13, Number 3, May/June 2007).

Are you quite sure about that, Kevin? Are you quite sure?

Just imagine for one second that your shower has sprung a leak and water is seeping through the ceiling below into your kitchen. Not good. So, after consulting the trusty Yellow Pages, you call a plumber, who duly turns up. You need to pop out for an hour, so you leave the plumber to it – the guy’s a professional, right? You trust him to do a good job – after all, he’s done this sort of thing before; the man knows what he’s doing.

You get back later to find that your plumber has ripped out the shower from upstairs and has relocated it in your lounge using nothing more than a plastic bucket with a hole in the bottom and the crazy magic of gravity. When you enquire what happened to the shower upstairs, he replies that it was old and needed replacing. And anyway – isn’t it more convenient to have a shower downstairs?

Brought to you by the power of crap analogy, welcome to the world of Mr Brooks.

Bruce Evans and Raynold Gideon were the adapters/ screenwriters of Stand By Me, a film that Script rightly describes as “a standout among the classics.” So what the devil were they thinking when they cooked up a film such as Mr Brooks, which is so brain implodingly bad it’s difficult to know where to start?

Kevin Costner plays the titular Mr Brooks, a seemingly happy and successful family man. But there’s a problem: Brooks is a serial killer. And what’s more, he likes it. Well, not Brooks per se, but his ebullient alter ego, Marshall (William Hurt on autopilot). Brooks’s problems start when he murders two dancers with a penchant for having sex with the curtains open; Brooks is photographed in the aftermath of the crime, and is blackmailed by a Mr Smith who rather bizarrely wants ‘in’ on Brooks’s next murder. At that point, at least thirty seven subplots of such stunning silliness drop in uninvited to turn the entire film into a convergence of tangled narratives that lead us precisely nowhere:

* Demi Moore plays Tracy Atwood, the (highly unlikely) cop who’s after Brooks. Atwood is in the midst of a bad tempered divorce from her second husband, whose financial demands upon her seem excessive – that is, until Brooks and Marshall discover that Atwood is a millionaire many times over. This fact alone seems to motivate Brooks to kill Atwood’s husband and his lawyer, an action that inadvertently sets up Atwood as a suspect (only it doesn’t, not really). What does Atwood’s financial status have to do with the main narrative thrust, or anything else for that matter? Absolutely nothing at all. There’s an effort to toss a ticking clock into proceedings, but the device is used in such a convoluted fashion that the detail floats over your head (and who cares about a ticking clock in a subplot anyway? Wouldn’t it better to shoehorn it into the main narrative, where Mr Brooks and Mr Smith drive pointlessly around town looking for someone to kill (which they never actually get around to doing)?).

* Atwood spends a good part of the film being hunted by an escaped convict – a packing slip in Mr Smith’s empty apartment (the contents having been shipped out by Mr Brooks and the slip planted there knowing full well Atwood would find it) leads her inadvertently to this guy’s lair, where they indulge in a boringly filmed shoot-out. Again, what does this have to do with the main narrative? Absolutely nothing at all.

* Most pointless of all is the subplot that concerns Brooks’s daughter, Jane, who has returned from college to admit to her parents that 1) one day she’d like to take over pop’s super-exciting box manufacturing business, and that 2) she’s pregnant. What she neglects to tell them is that there was a murder at her college shortly before she bailed out back home. Suspecting that his daughter has inherited his psychopathic make-up, Brooks flies halfway across the country to Jane’s college and commits a copycat murder, thereby providing his daughter with an alibi (of sorts). This subplot is concluded when Jane stabs her father in the throat with a pair of scissors, thereby confirming his worst fears. But wait: Brooks’s death is all a dream! I’m afraid that I simply do not have the words to describe just quite how staggeringly stupid and inept this entire subplot is.

All bitching aside, if anyone can explain to me exactly what on earth any of these subplots have to do with the main thrust of the film (if indeed there is one), then you’re welcome to my copy of Script in which Bruce Evans and Raynold Gideon recount how they got Mr Brooks off the ground (the one with the rather fetching picture of Randall Wallace on the cover). And if an entire rack of pointless subplots doesn’t do it for you, you might like to ponder the fact that the film resurrects this hoary old scene. Sheesh!

Stand By Me is a great film; Mr Brooks is unmitigated, unfocussed tosh. Weirdly, the one thing both films have in common is that they’re from the same writing team. If I was able to hark back to my crap plumbing analogy at this point, believe me, I would; however Mr Brookes is so bad, I’m pretty certain I’m going to have to think of an analogy that’s even barrel scrapingly worse than that.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Played Out Franchise

Contains Spoilers for Indy 4.

Bearing in mind the middling reviews that IJ4 has already received, I went along to my friendly, local multiplex not expecting to experience a landslide of narrative coherence. I mean, the words ‘Story by George Lucas’ is enough to make anyone spontaneously combust, but I was prepared: just entertain me, goddamn it! With a big marquee film like this, I don’t expect anything more than that.

One thing I just wasn’t prepared for was just how damn boring the whole thing was.

Mystery Man lays into the whole thing here better than I could, but the one thing he seems to miss is just how frickin’ dull it all was. The first fifteen minutes are a case in point: Indy and his chronically underwritten double/triple-dealing sidekick Mac find themselves prisoners of the Russian Army, forced to search an American military warehouse for the body of an extraterrestrial (don’t bother asking how half the Russian army have somehow ended up in the United States; you won’t understand – or even care about – the answer). OK, that much I can buy – it’s the heavy handed set up that really starts to grind. The three previous films hit the ground running – this one sort of limps out of the gate and has a lie down for fifteen minutes whilst it tries to figure out where the hell it wants to go. What’s more, the entire opening of the film is effectively made completely redundant by the fact that the narrative starts again with the arrival of Mutt (another crap sidekick). The scene in the diner is where the film actually begins, albeit with a landfill of boring and confusing exposition thrown in for good measure. Add in some pointless sub plots, far too many underwritten characters and a narrative that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and there you have it: the worst film of the quadrilogy by a long, long way – which brings me back to the whole problem of coherence.

I get positively autistic when faced with a narrative that doesn’t make sense, although I was quite prepared to temporarily suspend this debilitating condition in order to be entertained. Didn’t happen. Now I know that narrative coherence is not a luxury to be sacrificed in favour of spectacle: if you’re confused, you’re not involved - you spend half the time fretting away at a confusing narrative detail and not emoting, which is probably why Indy 4 has no discernible emotional intelligence to it at all. The first step should have been to make the thing actually make sense – everything can then follow from there. But then again, coherence is not something we’ve come to expect from George Lucas, bless him.

Soupy Twist

Contains spoilers for War, The Usual Suspects, The Number 23, Perfect Stranger and Secret Window.

I have a confession to make: I’m really starting to despise movies with a twist ending, in particular those that reveal that the protagonist is actually the antagonist (i.e., that guy we’ve been following about for last ninety minutes who’s been trying to solve those mysterious deaths in that haunted old cheese factory? It was him! He did it! And just to piss you off even more, here’s a painfully convoluted explanation). That said, perhaps I should start watching a better class of film than War, in which Jason Statham does his best to get his chops round an American accent. As if anyone needs to be told, the film features two twists, both of them pretty pointless (and one of them a very half hearted attempt at making the protag the antag) – at which point I thought, enough! Twist endings? Take a hike! If any film commits the now unforgiveable sin of revealing that the protagonist is the bad guy, I will snap DVDs and bellow at someone until I get my money back.

The culprits in the area of protag/antag reversal are many and varied: Adam Quigley comes up with a handy user’s guide here, where he points the finger at some of the major offenders in this field – Secret Window, Perfect Stranger, The Number 23: all of them complete rubbish. One notable exception to this list is of course The Usual Suspects, mostly because the film uses the ‘conceit’ of an unreliable narrator: as Verbal is not exactly your typical movie protagonist, the film sits way above the blundering stupidity epitomised by The Number 23.

Even so, what The Usual Suspects did was to kick start a whole slew of scripts and films where the surprise/twist ending was everything. The ending of The Usual Suspects has been criticised quite widely, but I enjoyed the film more for the fact that it didn’t presume its audience were morons, which is certainly something you can’t say about The Number 23. After The Usual Suspects, it was The Sixth Sense, and before, it was Angel Heart. Every few years a standout film will push head and shoulders above its contemporaries and inadvertently inspire a whole new wave of warmed up cack: so it goes.

However, enough is enough, and the reversal/twist ending of protag as antag should be the first casualty. It’s been done so many times – both by great films (Angel Heart) and by rubbish ones (Perfect Stranger) – that it’s stepped across the line and has become a cliché (albeit one that people still use). For me, it’s on a par with being told at a movie’s conclusion: it was all a dream. Arrrggghhh! Can’t we have something a little more intelligent for a change?

Sounds Like A Rude Word But Isn't.

There are some things in life that I’m destined just not to get: for example, anything written by Stephen Poliakoff, or any script that is unlucky enough to find itself in the hands of Michael Winterbottom. Whether I’m simply demented, stupid or slightly retarded, I have another item to add to the list – the films of Pedro Almodóvar (well, Volver at least).

Maybe my not liking Volver exhibits my own prejudices and subjective dislikes much the same as anyone else, but when Mark Kermode describes it as a gorgeously melancholic melodrama-cum-ghost-story, I have to wonder whether he saw the same film as I did. Yeah, OK, so there’s nothing drastically wrong with it – it’s just the critical avalanche of hyperbole that is heaped upon this film just seems to be a little misplaced to me.

Talking of hyperbole, here’s Paul Howlett:

Almodóvar manages to make a ludicrous farce about a mother and daughter who kill the abusive man of the house and set about covering their tracks, hindered by a back-from-the-dead grandmother, into a work of emotionally astute, heartaching drama. It's pure magic...

Except, it isn’t – not really. I think the best way to describe it is three parts melodrama, two parts soap opera and one part camp (or five parts camp if you consider that melodrama and soap opera fall under this heading as well). Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against soap opera/continuing drama, or anything that is even remotely camp for that matter – it’s just that in Volver, soap opera is equated with ‘trash TV’, where in fact the film doesn’t really do anything to transcend the genre it’s supposed to be an ironic homage to. Think of it as a feature length episode of Emmerdale with the camp quotient turned up to eleven. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not my cup of tea – like I said before, the fact that I didn’t like Volver harshly exposes my likes and dislikes, and there’s nothing I can really do about that. However, if an ‘emotionally astute’ drama is Almodóvar’s aim, then to my mind why can’t the story be told without it being fed through the prism of camp, ironic or not?

Down at the level of screenwriting mechanics, something seems to be amiss as well: although the central planks of the narrative are all sound, characters spend an absolute age saying hello and goodbye to each other, before walking across the street to do the same in someone else’s house. Characters get out of cars, walk down streets, then walk back up them. Cut these travelling to-and-fro moments out of the film, and you’d probably lose about fifteen minutes (which would be a good thing, as I almost nodded off at the 110 minute mark). A good deal of exposition is delivered during these moments in such a way as to make it obvious that these little nuggets of information are going to be vitally important later on – and there’s the problem: it’s obvious that they’re going to be important. Apart from one clunkingly enormous revelation at the film’s conclusion (which is both startling yet somehow banal), everything just seems eminently predictable.

Ah well – I’m off to see Iron Man at the weekend – something tells me that the camp quotient there is going to be dangerously low.

House of Wax

Contains spoilers for House of Wax.

You really don’t need me to inform you that House of Wax is a pile of unmitigated old flap, and ordinarily I wouldn’t even bother commenting on it (the fact that the movie was cast around
Paris Hilton – who didn’t even have to audition for her role – should tell you everything you need to know about it. That, and the involvement of Joel Silver, hardly your benchmark of quality). The point is that in terms of screenwriting mechanics and structure, the thing is so completely out of control as to tip it into the realms of the quite interesting – not that this is entirely what the writers were aiming at, I’m sure, which still makes it a pile of unmitigated old flap.

I’ve lost count of the number of horror films that stick slavishly to a three act structure, which usually means that nothing really happens in the first half hour as the narrative treads water waiting for that all-important first ‘turning point’. However, with House of Wax, nothing happens for 46 minutes, which is either a clever way of confounding expectations, or a massively misjudged wrong turn (I’m voting for the latter). Much of this time is taken up with a hugely pointless drive through the middle of nowhere as two of the six hapless teenagers being lined up for a little slice ‘n’ dice take off in search of a fanbelt; again, maybe this is meant to be unsettling – we’re so far into things now that surely something has to happen. Trouble is, it doesn’t – the creepy driver disappears until the very end of the film (where his re-appearance is almost wholly meaningless). Then, of course, everything goes bonkers for the next hour.

Surely one abiding convention of a horror film such as this is to keep the focus of the action tight. Look at The Thing – 12 men in the middle of nowhere get picked off by a weird, steamy alien – and by the middle of nowhere, I mean a single location. House of Wax has an intriguing location (a deserted town in the middle of nowhere populated by waxworks and two psychotic ex-Siamese twins) – problem is, only four of the six teenage dunderheads end up there, and even then they arrive in two waves. The first 46 minutes of the film seem intent on separating the larger group from each other, probably for the purpose of stringing things out to a respectable feature length. There’s even a completely pointless trip by four of the group to see a football game, but they get stuck in traffic and have to return to where they started from. The whole film is stuffed with bizarre narrative dead ends such as this – so much so that you start thinking it must be deliberate.

Perhaps House of Wax is some wildly intellectual anti-narrative experiment. Here’s David Boje on the subject:

Antenarrative is the fragmented, non-linear, incoherent, collective, unplotted, and pre-narrative speculation, a bet. To traditional narrative methods, antenarrative is an improper storytelling, a wager that a proper narrative can be constituted.

Then you realise Paris Hilton is in it, and you’re forced to give yourself a good slap for being a pretentious arse. The problem with House of Wax is that its script is in dire need of least three more drafts and a good kicking - nothing more.

When Adaptations Go Bad - Cutter's Way

Contains spoilers for Cutter and Bone and Cutter’s Way

From a purely financial standpoint, I can see the pull that adapting a successful novel would have for any good-to-go (and suitably flush) production company. When you’re in the realms of a big time unit shifter such as Harry Potter, these properties come ready supplied with their own fan base, so not turning a profit from any film adaptation should be unheard of (unless that adaptation is directed by Chris Weitz, of course). Even if you love the books but don’t consider yourself a huge cinema fan, you’d probably want to check the film out anyway, just out of curiosity – which is the mistake I recently made with Cutter’s Way.

Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg is a superb book – a downbeat seventies hangover that twists and turns all the way to the final sentence (just don’t expect anything that Thornburg wrote afterwards to be even half as good). Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) spots a man dumping a body in a trashcan, and sets out – with his disabled and violently bitter Vietnam veteran buddy, Alex Cutter – to blackmail the man they think is responsible. The conclusion is literally gobsmacking, purely because the two broken losers we have spent the entirety of the narrative following are actually proved to be right, which seems almost as shocking as the fate that befalls both Cutter and Bone.

So, the one part of the book you would expect the film to remain faithful to is the ending. Big problem: it isn’t. Cutter (John Heard) and Bone waltz into a glitzy reception being thrown by their quarry (thereby cutting out the immense and melancholic road trip they make across the US in the book) where Bone gets roughed up by a couple of security guards and Cutter takes off round the property for no good reason on a stolen horse (for a one-armed, one-legged veteran, he sure gets about pretty well). Disappointingly, the ending is a complete reversal of the book: justice is seen to be done (even if it does seem a little hollow). The book does exactly the opposite: money, power and influence win out, and Bone realises - too late - that neither he, his buddy Cutter or Cutter's wife - stood a cat in hell's chance. What made the book so powerful is watered down in the film to such an extent that all you can do is throw your hands in the air and stomp off like a spoilt eight year old.

All of which begs the question: why bother adapting a book for the screen when what made the book so memorable and powerful is discarded?

Apart from the disappointment of the ending, there’s nothing wrong with the film adaptation as such – it’s just a bit, well, dull. The seventies hangover that the book portrays so well merely comes across in Cutter’s Way as ennui, which means that it isn’t exactly very exciting to watch. John Heard chews up the scenery as Alex Cutter as you would expect any actor to in this role, but even this isn’t enough to redeem the film.

Turns out that Thornburg wasn’t too enamoured of the movie either, according to this:

There's one thing about Cutter and Bone, Newton Thornburg's 1976 masterpiece, that irritates its author. "People know it mainly through the movie", he says, "there's this great book and they haven't read it - but this mediocre movie and everybody's seen it."

Read an extract of Cutter and Bone here.

What A Scrunt.

Contains spoilers for Lady in the Water

My nephew is currently studying photography at an art college where the ‘lecturers’ seem peculiarly clueless. In putting his portfolio together for a series of degree course interviews, my nephew was told by his tutor (the vast majority of whom seem to be motivated by the twin goals of ‘pussy and paycheque’ (Copyright Daniel Clowes)) that the images he selected should not make sense to anyone but himself – the reasoning being that the artist is the only person who can describe the rationale behind what he does. I can’t begin to list the many and varied ways in which this makes my blood boil. However, if you’re M. Night Shyamalan, then this sentiment is right up your street.

Lady in the Water is an incoherent waste of celluloid – but what makes it so painfully godawful is that it seems to be a paean to what Shyamalan sees as his own shining beacon of genius. Why else would he have a character say (and I’m paraphrasing here), “What person could be so arrogant to presume to know the intention of another human being?” Given the fact that this criticism is indirectly aimed at the thoroughly unlikeable book and film critic Harry Farber, this should tell you all you need to know about what Shyamalan thinks of (his) critics.

Perhaps Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian sums it up best:

As the film continued, I personally began to bow my head in humility and self-knowledge. My pen slipped from my nerveless fingers and hot teardrops fell on my notepad, like a pure and cleansing rain, blurring the vindictive remarks I had scribbled. I was ashamed ... ashamed ... that I had ever given this incredible idiot M Night Shyamalan anything approaching a good review.

The mere fact that Shyamalan puts such words into the mouths of his characters says to me that the director honestly thinks that he is the only person permitted to comment on this excruciatingly awful film. He’s wrong. A film such as Lady in the Water does not exist in a vacuum – once it’s out there in the big bad world it’s going to generate comment, criticism, and even analysis that – horrors! – might conflict with the director’s own view. If I had to sit through every film with Shyamalan’s strict instructions not to apply my own interpretation, I don’t think I’d ever buy another DVD again. I think it was Umberto Eco who said that the novel is a machine for generating possibilities – Shyamalan may well be disappointed to realise that these are usually arrived at without the assistance of the author.

The fact that Shyamalan has cast himself in Lady in the Water as the author of a book that is somehow going to “save the world” should send you screaming from this film at a rate of knots. If it doesn’t, then perhaps the first scene should do it. The down at heel janitor Cleveland Heep (played by the ever dependable Paul Giametti) rattles about under a sink with a broom. A screaming family cower behind him in comedic fashion as the brave Heep makes exaggerated efforts to kill something big and hairy. The whole scene is just so gratuitously stupid, I should have turned it off right then. But then again I would have missed the unintentional comedy of Mr Dury attempting a spot of divination with a crossword puzzle, or his son attempting to do the same with a packed cupboard of cereal boxes. And – Jesus H Christ! – it’s Jared Harris, down on his luck slumming it in a movie with no detectable script.

I thought I’d seen some bad films, but this one takes the biscuit.

The Queen versus Norman Baker

Contains Spoilers for The Strange Death of David Kelly

I haven’t really seen it properly, but doesn’t The Queen strike you as a completely bizarre idea for a film? When I first saw it advertised in a cinema somewhere, I literally could not get my head round the fact why anyone in their own right mind would want to go and see it, but what do I know? I’m sure there’s a readymade American market that laps this stuff up, and who’s to say that’s a bad thing? Certainly not me.

Like The Last King of Scotland (another Peter Morgan script), The Queen mines a rich seam of unsympathetic protagonists in a study of tradition (represented by Helen Mirren, or as she is now better known: Her Maj) versus populism (represented by Tony Blair and his gang of gurning modernisers). Well, I’m guessing that’s what it’s about – I’ve seen it on three different occasions now and haven’t actually managed to see the whole thing, so no doubt there are huge gaps in my viewing experience. But bear with me.

A little while back, I wrote about the world of Spooks, and how I perceived that there had been a perceptible tonal shift in the ‘culture’ that made such a series possible. Although I liked Spooks, something about it seemed strangely reactionary – and the same thing struck me about The Queen.

The film portrays Blair the head cheese and his gruff, tabloid-wise sidekick, Alistair Campbell, as brave modernisers, wary and respectful of the old traditions, but recognising that by necessity, they must change. With the benefit of hindsight, Tony Blair’s premiership is not likely to be remembered for the Campbell-scripted speech he gave after Princess Diana’s death, but for an ill-advised, illegal and disastrous war.

Which leads me neatly onto The Strange Death of David Kelly, by Norman Baker, the famous Liberal Democrat windbag). This book is a thorough if at times rambling investigative study into the death of the Government weapons expert, David Kelly, found dead in suspicious circumstances in July 2003. The picture it paints of the Blair administration is not at all flattering, and to a certain extent this is to be expected. What is surprising, however, is the forensic diligence that Baker applies to the central question, which leads him to a startling conclusion: that Kelly was murdered by Iraqi intelligence operatives, and his death made to look like suicide, most probably by members of the UK intelligence community.

Baker grinds through a variety of scenarios – even a few that sound positively demented – and emerges with a thesis that is logical and well argued, even if there are a few unavoidable leaps of guesswork. It’s a persuasively and passionately argued book that leaves few stones unturned – a book that, in adapted form, would give a valid counterpoint to The Queen.

Conspiracy theories may well be a little old hat these days, and have almost certainly been overtaken by the imprecisions of ‘historical fiction’. But when a film as reactionary as The Queen pops up, I often wish there was something that could stand alongside it to give an opposing point of view.

As above, hindsight is a wonderful thing – The Queen is set in the initial days and months of Blair’s premiership, where anything seemed possible. Blair and Campbell are matey iconoclasts, all too aware of what they perceive as being the ‘right thing’, and what they need to do to achieve it. However, in The Strange Death of David Kelly, Blair and Campbell are obsessed with the retention of power; their treatment of David Kelly was disgraceful at best, and their political hobbling of the BBC and the ensuing Hutton enquiry were the breathtakingly arrogant actions of men convinced that they were right (and what is particularly galling about the whole episode is that it was the BBC that was right all along).

The Queen is undoubtedly a work of fiction – where politicians strive for the common good, how could it be anything else? Discounting the obvious guesswork that Baker’s conclusion necessarily demands, The Strange Death of David Kelly seems anything but, a world where the good guys get killed and the bad guys get the million pound book deals. Maybe I’m a bit weird, but I know which one I’d rather pay money to see.

Fun with Product Placement

Contains Spoilers for Perfect Stranger

A few years back, I used to work for a large Champagne house. Every now and again, we’d get requests from film production companies asking us if we’d like our product to feature in their film – all for an exorbitant fee of course, which they would use to offset the cost of production. I’m all for imaginative movie financing such as this, not that it really got anyone anywhere. At the time, Champagne sales were riding high – the French couldn’t produce enough of the stuff (it is a finite product, after all), so why would anyone want to advertise to sell more? The stuff essentially sold itself.

This is something you almost certainly couldn’t say about Perfect Stranger, which plays as if someone has dropped eighty half-written thriller plot points into a huge food processor and simply hit the ‘splurge’ button, not caring what was poured out or what it looked like. The one notable thing about it is the amount of product placement on show. And as this is a film set partially in the world of advertising, that means there’s an absolute rampage of brands queuing up to get their fifteen seconds of A-list Hollywood exposure. Reebok, Match.com, Victoria’s Secret, Heineken, Sony – plus a few others I probably missed.

It’s bad enough when any film starts down this route, but when it’s in your face as much as it is here, it actually starts to disrupt the very narrative that it helped pay for. For instance, Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis), hot shot advertising honcho and prime suspect in the murder of Halle Berry’s arch-nemesis in a plot too convoluted to give a flying arse about, introduces a Victoria’s Secret show (replete with Heidi Klum co-hosting). All this sequence said to me was that there was no way a brand like Victoria’s Secret was going to let their fictitious fashion show be introduced by a cold blooded murderer, imagined or not. Ka-thunk went a major plank of the narrative, and with it my interest.

Watching Perfect Stranger, I’m sure there’s a correlation to be drawn between quite how bad a film is and the amount of product placement shoehorned into it – Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, anyone? That said, my favourite ever product placement moment – if you can call it that – occurs in Blue Velvet. Our hero’s (Jeffrey Beaumont) favourite tipple is Heineken. At one point in the film, the unpredictable and deranged psychopath Frank Booth asks, ‘What kind of beer do you like to drink, neighbour?’ ‘Heineken,’ Jeffrey replies, uncertain as to whether this is the right answer. ‘Heineken?’ roars Frank, ‘Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!’

The Unsympathetic Protagonist

Contains spoilers for The Last King of Scotland

‘Adaptation’ seems to be the buzz word of the moment wherever you’re lurking in the ‘scribosphere’ (someone, please – come up with a better term than this to describe what writers do on the internet – I’ll pay good money to see a new non-cringe worthy term). What with Lianne’s Adaptation group convening on 26th February for a spot of cake flinging, adaptation fever is everywhere, and on UFP it’s no different. Okay, so it took me a year to get round to it (after reading a great review on the now sadly and apparently defunct Film Flam), but after having watched The Last King of Scotland I feel the need to go off on yet another wild and rambling tangent. Oh yes.

My wife’s reaction on having sat through Nicholas Garrigan’s (James McAvoy) exploits in TLKOS was, “The bloke’s a twat.” It’s hard to disagree, and therein lies the problem. Although he doesn’t instantly come across as a twat, it doesn’t take Garrigan long to settle into a twat-like groove – and the first three scenes send him down this route quite nicely, thank you. Admittedly, the first three scenes are fantastic: the character of Garrigan – a newly graduated medical student – craves stimulation, excitement. To escape the suffocating clutches of his parents, Garrigan spins a globe in his room and jabs a finger at it in a random effort to find somewhere – anywhere – to run to: he doesn’t care where. Well, he does a bit, as his first choice – Canada – is rejected in favour of Uganda.

Within ten minutes of setting foot in country, he is cheerfully rutting with the citizenry and putting the moves on Sarah Merrit (Gillian Anderson), the wife of the doctor who runs the medical centre where Garrigan is supposed to work. His words about wanting to help seem increasingly empty, especially as Uganda is a place that he knows absolutely nothing about – not that he particularly wants to. The spin of the globe sets this all up superbly. We know that Garrigan doesn’t really care – a fact that is driven home when he absconds from his duties at the medical centre to become Idi Amin’s (Forest Whittaker) personal physician and sidekick. Dazzled by uniforms and medals, Garrigan is essentially a naive lout. As the brutal truth regarding Amin’s dictatorship is made apparent, Garrigan belatedly realises that he’s bet on the wrong horse. His punishment – his retribution – is bloody and terrifying.

This is all well and good, but the central problem still remains: the bloke’s a twat. The writers Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock have certainly crafted a memorable enough character, but as George Lucas points out (I’m paraphrasing here), writing an unsympathetic character is easy – all you have to do is make him/her kick a dog: job done. Garrigan’s journey sees him travel from naive simpleton to naive simpleton who’s had a bit of a slap – not much of a character arc there, if that’s what you’re looking for. The spin of the globe is brilliant screenwriting – but making us care for a character whose sole function appears to be pursuing his own mostly hedonistic pursuits is probably a draft too far in this case...

...which all seems very strange when you start comparing Giles Foden’s book with the screenplay. In the book, Garrigan is more of a clueless prat than the gung-ho know-nothing McAvoy portrays him as. Due to this, there are several scenes in the film that jump out due to their incongruousness. Whilst treating Amin for a hand injury, Garrigan grabs Amin’s own handgun and shoots an injured cow that is ‘ruining his concentration’. Garrigan’s pursuit of Sarah Merrit is portrayed in a soft romantic focus that lacks the harder edge of the book, where Garrigan misreads the situation and is unceremoniously rejected, a scene that partially speeds his journey to Amin’s side. The script manoeuvres him quickly out of the medical centre, which only reinforces the idea that he’s a naive simpleton overly impressed by power and shiny medals.

I guess you could make the argument that Garrigan actually wants to help, but this is rather swamped by his starry eyed admiration for Amin. In this case, expecting us to follow Garrigan for two hours does rather try the patience, not least because the story is told almost exclusively from Garrigan’s point of view. His ignorance becomes our ignorance; he knows nothing about the history – post-colonial or otherwise – of Uganda, and so neither do we. To expect any film to do something like this is a tall order, so the script relies upon the larger than life character of Amin to deliver this aspect of the narrative. Does it succeed? Sort of. However, you have to negotiate round a bone-headed protagonist in order to see it properly.

There’s nothing wrong with unsympathetic protagonists of course – look at Taxi Driver, which juggles with this issue brilliantly – the problem with Garrigan is that he doesn’t appear to possess much humanity in the first place. The spin of the globe tells you all you need to know.

Oh Dear...

Contains spoilers for The Sentinel

The Sentinel, directed by Clark Johnson, written by George Nolfi, adapted from the novel by Gerald Petievich.

When it comes to narrative logic, I am positively, pedantically autistic – which is unfortunate when a film like The Sentinel stumps up. It’s fun to throw bricks, but not at the disabled. That said, if you want to know how to conscientiously build character and narrative from the ground up, watch this film: it’s a veritable masterclass in how to get it all entirely WRONG.

The Sentinel is about three drafts away from a tolerably half decent but dull thriller. Forget the workmanlike direction from Clark Johnson and focus instead on the clunkingly ham fisted script. I mean, Christ, where do you start?

Perhaps the most glaring load of old hokum is the drastically underwritten subplot regarding Pete Garrison’s (Michael Douglas) private life. First off, he’s having it off with the First Lady (Kim Basinger – so that’s at least one of Douglas’s contractual obligations met). So far so good. However, Dave Breckinridge (Kiefer Sutherland), the relentless and brilliant Secret Service guy, is pissed off with Garrison as he blames Garrison for breaking up his marriage by sleeping with his wife, something that Douglas denies. In a completely unnecessary detour down a narrative dead end, Garrison meets Brekenridge’s wife, who admits to Garrison the real reason her marriage split up was because her husband was impossible to live with.

What this suggests is that in an earlier draft, some studio executive/reader decided that the conflict between the two leads needed to be ramped up a couple of notches: hence the painful shoehorning in of a convoluted subplot. Not only does a pointlessly artificial conflict clog up the narrative for no good reason, it also starts to play illogical games with Breckenridge’s character. Bear in mind that Breckenridge is supposedly a top notch investigator, able to analyse and deconstruct a crime scene in seconds – the same guy is completely unable to figure out what went on between Garrison and his own wife (i.e., nothing). But rather than using this dichotomy to provide some interesting character asides, it’s simply forgotten – Breckenridge ends up reunited with his wife and all is well. Gah!

Character development is another interesting way to look at this narrative, purely because there isn’t any. When the film starts, Garrison is a good ole boy (he saved the Prez twenty years before). When the film ends, he’s still a good ole boy (hey, whaddya know: he’s saved the Prez again). Yawn! Breckenridge’s character is similarly developed, and as for Jill Marin (the impossibly gorgeous Eva Longoria): what on earth is she even doing here? The only point to the character is to act as eye candy, not only for the audience but for the other characters in the film, who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time asking her out for coffee and looking at her ass (I mean, who wouldn’t?).

The central narrative is massively underdeveloped as well: Garrison is being set up as the mole in the Secret Service who is responsible for leaking details about the President’s movements so nasty terrorists with funny accents can nail him (said terrorists come from a fictitious ex-Soviet republic, scriptwriting shorthand for ‘let’s not offend anyone here, guys, especially those that reside in overseas markets’). The script then goes on to explain why the terrorists want the Prez dead – uh, no, hang on a minute, it doesn’t. You could argue that this isn’t the central thrust of the film at all, and you’d be right – however, why make such a big song and dance about it in the first place if it’s not important? Oh, and the terrorists are led by a guy who possesses a vaguely Cockney-ish accent. Uh? It’s probably best not to ask ‘why?’ as you will drive yourself insane with the sheer implausible sprawling mess of it.

You want more hokum? You got it!

- Garrison takes fifty minutes to go on the run in an attempt to clear his name. Douglas huffs and puffs about a bit before realising he’s far too old for all this nonsense, and sensibly wraps up the chase after half an hour – tension over.

- What happens to the Prez’s marriage (remember that Garrison was boffing the First Lady)? No idea! What this tells me is that if you have an unresolved plot point at the end of your script, just ignore it! As if by magic, the issue will disappear and no-one will remember it anyway. Problem solved!

- Jill Marin goes from rookie to experienced Secret Service agent purely on the basis that Garrison tells us. She does nothing of real note throughout, but does remember to bring her ass with her (see above), which of course is most fortunate.

The best way to watch a movie like The Sentinel is to completely erase it from your mind as soon as it’s finished. Or watch something decent like Serpico, which I did yesterday. Oh, and avoid anything written by George Nolfi (who apparently had a finger in The Bourne Supremacy - oo-errr, missus!) – that should just about do it.

No Brainer or Five Brains?

I never thought I’d say it, but there are far too many films out there – and for some lunatic reason, I feel duty bound to watch them all in the hopelessly deluded notion that perhaps one day I will simply come to the end of all films ever produced.

Let’s hope so if Die Hard 4.0 is anything to go by...

Die Hard 4.0 – directed by Len Wiseman, written by Mark Bomback.

Watching this, all I could think of was something I read in The Guardian a little while back, inasmuch as that the film industry is the only industry that has used digital techniques to significantly increase costs. What we used to have was a two hour film with five to ten minutes of expensive effects – in Die Hard 4.0 there’s an eye-wateringly expensive digital effect every two minutes. Add in your trademarked ‘Really Shit Sidekick’ (hang on a minute, that sounds like something on Cartoon Network) and all of a sudden, you’re in dumbass heaven (unfortunately it looks like the new Indy film is going to be cocked up by an surfeit of RSS as well.)

(I suspect the reason that the Really Shit Sidekick theory is being applied to well loved franchises such as Die Hard and Indy is purely to get that all-important teenage demographic through the turnstiles, which probably means that the scripts have been ‘written’ by focus groups, marketing goons and clever bits of software. That said, it’s surely got to be better than anything written by George ‘Lead Ear’ Lucas).

And then, king of the nerds Kevin Smith shows up!

What set the first two Die Hard films apart for me was the tight focus by way of location (respectively, an office block and an airliner). In Die Hard 4.0, McClane rushes around the US as if he’s on some weird and incredibly boring tour of electricity substations. Surely the template for any action movie is to keep the focus tight and light the blue touchpaper: something that Die Hard 4.0 completely neglects to do.

I’m with Gilbert Adair on this one – I love special effects, I just don’t like the films they’re in.

Inland Empire – written and directed by David Lynch.

I really was not looking forward to this at all. Three hours of brain-bending cryptic nonsense all filmed on digital video – sounds like a migraine waiting to happen.

And you know what? That’s exactly what it is.

Don’t get me wrong – I love Blue Velvet. Wild at Heart is a blast. Lost Highway is deranged, most certainly. Mulholland Drive is, yes, well, ahem... But Inland Empire? If there was ever a need for restraint and a roomful of rabid script editors, this film is living proof.

Maybe I’m just not intelligent or patient enough to watch films like this – either that or I need to grow a little goatee for some serious beard scratching.

Sight and Sound voted this number 2 amongst their Top 10 films of 2007. Uh, hello? Here are some selected critical highlights:

Mark Fisher: Convoluted and involuted: Lynch's rabbit warren anarchitecture of trauma is difficult, unsettling and endlessly, weirdly fascinating.

Peter Matthews: After ten minutes of more or less consecutive narrative, you're pretty much free-falling. David Lynch's three-hour surrealist odyssey vanquishes the conscious ego and heads straight for the id. A mind-warping masterpiece.

Chip Smith: What’s going on here then? Oh, look, rabbits – I like rabbits. My head hurts. Is it over yet? Ooh, time for a nap. Zzzzz...

If you need to suspend all brain functions to watch a film like Die Hard 4.0, then you need to harness the processing power at least five brains to try and piece together what the flying arse is going on here. That said, perhaps Inland Empire is some kind of bizarre intelligence test – everyone who professes to understand it or at least expresses an admiration for it will get a regular column on Sight and Sound. Everyone else who simply shrugs and scratches their head will get a job on The Dandy (and I know which one I’d rather write for).

Admittedly, the three hour running time doesn’t help. After the first hour, the film went into a determinedly mentalist freefall and I dozed off intermittently (only the second time I have ever done this, Institute Benjamenta being the other culprit). Even the end title sequence is tortuous and never–ending.

After the most gruelling three hours I have ever spent in the company of a DVD, I read this in The Guardian – the thought struck me that David Lynch is no longer a filmmaker, he’s an artist. As far as any audience is concerned, that really is not a good place to be.

Hack and Slash (100 Posts and Counting)

Contains spoilers for 28 Weeks Later and Alpha Dog.

Well, flip me (I've made a vague resolution for 2008 not to swear so much) - 100 posts and counting. Doesn't time fly when you're having fun! That said, neither 28 Weeks Later or Alpha Dog are a whole lot of fun - the only way to deal with them is to hack them down with a sharpened spade like the mangy old dogs they are.

28 Weeks Later – directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo; written by Rowan Joffe, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, Jesus Olmo, Enrique Lopez Lavigne (and Rowan Joffe’s dog for all I know).

About twenty minutes in, I started to worry: why can’t I bring myself to care what happens to these people? Why do I truly not give a rat’s ass what happens to any of them? Am I sociopathic? Asleep? Dead perhaps? Then I realised that the four writers it took to churn this thing out haven’t got a scooby. Phew! Indeed, it took four of them to make it this bad (not counting Rowan Joffe’s dog of course, who was apparently denied a screenwriting credit).

Robert Caryle plays Don, a man so chickenshit that he abandons his wife to a houseful of zombies and bravely runs away as fast as his little Scottish legs will carry him. Way to go, writer guys! Make your protagonist a dyed in the wool, lily-livered coward from the off – that’ll do it. What’s more, Bob lies to his children about having seen his wife die, which turns into a major embarrassment when she turns up alive in the attic of their London home.

But not to worry! Don is bitten by his wife, whom he then kills. He then goes on a zombified killing spree, infecting the population of London all over again. The movie then goes into freefall as it flails about looking for a protagonist – in the resulting search, it finds about eight of them, all of them hopeless cardboard cut outs brandishing military hardware. Ho hum.

I also got a little hung up on trying to figure out exactly who the protagonist was. You could argue that within the horror genre this question doesn't matter so much, as characterisation is often sacrified (wrongly in my opinion) in favour of keeping the audience guessing who is going to die next. However, in 28 Weeks Later, after forty minutes Don’s narrative is completely jettisoned – he is given no chance to redeem himself with his wife and children, which makes for a viewing experience so devoid of emotion as to be utterly pointless.

And what’s more, Don’s son crawls into an air vent to escape the rampaging zombie hoardes, thereby violating John August’s Air Vent Rule (...the only time I’ve seen the inside of an air duct is television and movies, when a character — generally the hero — has to be clever enough (and small enough) to climb through a conveniently-accessible air duct). Jesus Christ, they’ll be playing chess next (the next time I see two characters in a movie playing chess – stand up Lucky Number Slevin and Revolver – I’m going to write a stiff letter to my MP)!

And what the bajesus is that sub-Godspeed MOR racket doing clogging up the soundtrack? STOP IT, NOW!

Anyway, zombies – aint’cha sick of ‘em? So last season, sweetie.

Alpha Dog – written and directed by Nick Cassavetes.

Where do you start with a film like this? There’s so much going on I started to wonder whether half of it was altogether necessary. For instance, the faux documentary interviews – are they really needed? No – they simply over-egg an already over-egged pudding. The idea I guess is that the documentary elements add to the supposed ‘true story’ elements of the movie, and provide some (unneeded) exposition. I suspect what it’s really there for is to provide opportunities for actors to chew up the scenery (note to self: histrionic/ hysterical dialogue is no substitute for a genuinely involving/emotional narrative). Not that Bruce Willis does any of this, to be honest, but you knew that anyway.

The movie’s central conflict takes nearly forty minutes to establish, which is fine, but probably could have been done in fifteen minutes without quite so much fannying about. And what a couple of whiny, unsympathetic jerkwads these guys are – Johnny Truelove, wannabe middle class gangster and all round dick, and Jake Mazursky, the paramilitary junkie moron with a sideline in SS tattoos and overacting who is seemingly never too wasted to lay out a room full of party goers in a frenzy of comedy Tae Kwando. That said, Jake disappears halfway through, which is always a problem with sprawling narratives such as this: if you spread the role of the protagonist amongst six or seven characters, then at some point someone is going to get left out. As Alpha Dog stands, we end up following the least sympathetic character of all, Johnny Truelove, who ends up not getting shagged in New Mexico. It really isn’t that interesting.

That said, does it really matter who the protagonist is? Admittedly, Cassavetes does a much better job than the seventy eight writers needed to cobble together 28 Weeks Later. In this case, perhaps we can revert to Chip Smith’s Patented Screenwriting Excuses:

Excuse #32: No clear protagonist? It’s an ensemble piece, you frickin’ mofo (rubbish swearing courtesy of Alpha Dog).

In addition to actors over-emoting in an attempt to lend proceedings a much needed emotional core, it also appears that rubbish David Bowie songs have to be drafted in to do this job as well (it’s a well known fact that after 1980’s Scary Monsters Bowie was replaced by a cyborg who proceeded to royally screw up a top drawer oeuvre by releasing Let’s Dance and forming Tin Machine). For a film that purports to be ‘real’, shoehorning in a late period Bowie song is just not right, and certainly not credible. Remember Leon, a good film spoiled by the addition of a Sting song over the closing credits? For the love of god – Sting! Arrgghh! Why not just put Cliff Richard and The Tweets on the soundtrack and have done with it?

I was going to write about Die Hard 4.0, but could feel a swear word about to emerge. I will try and calm down a bit and report back later...

Christmas with Stanley Tucci

Contains spoilers for The Devil Wears Prada and Lucky Number Slevin (also contains a gratuitous Kylie Minogue insult).

After watching that absolutely godawful Kylie Showgirl Live thing that was on over Christmas (La Minogue’s voice sounds as if someone is doing something unspeakable to a small mammal with an out of tune clarinet), I decided to watch nothing but films featuring the great Stanley Tucci – not that I had a choice in the matter. This Christmas, whenever someone turned on the TV or slapped on a DVD, there he was, as ubiquitous as Elvis.

The Devil Wears Prada, directed by David Frankel, adapted from the novel by Lauren Weisberger by Aline Brosh McKenna. This is about the fluffiest piece of fluffy fluff it’s ever been my pleasure to sit through – not that I object to films like this, but the word ‘inconsequential’ seems specifically apt here. If you were being particularly cruel, you could describe the whole thing as a Disney-fied Shopping and Fucking. It goes without saying that Stanley Tucci is the best thing about it.

Curiously, although the screenplay feels adequately developed (inasmuch as you can see the 'stake in the ground' three act setbacks telegraphing themselves from about a hundred miles away), in several areas it felt lopsided and uneven. For instance, one crucial turning point (where Andy - the protagonist - has the belated realisation that the fashion industry isn’t quite her bag), revolves around the fact that she made a choice earlier in the film that supposedly demonstrated she was as hard-nosed and career oriented as her psychopathically driven boss, Miranda (Meryl Streep). Problem is, this so called ‘decision’ was forced upon Andy by Miranda herself, so in effect, it isn’t really a decision at all – this has the effect of making the conclusion to the film seem weirdly illogical. With a movie like this, you half expect the screenplay to be machine tooled to gleaming perfection, but instead all you get is a half whittled piece of wood.

That said, who cares about a coherent narrative when there are fabulous dresses and fashion shows to enjoy (good god, I sound like Liberace)?

Shall We Dance? – directed by Peter Chelsom, adapted by Audrey Wells from an original screenplay by Masayuki Suo. What is Peter Chelsolm – the writer and director of Funny Bones – doing heading up this garish load of warmed-over remade flapdoodle? And since American Gigolo, Richard Gere’s oeuvre has consisted almost exclusively of scripts that have had all the fun, subversion and joy surgically removed by unsmiling movie executives with hearts of coal. Shall We Dance is no exception. It even has Jennifer Lopez in it, not exactly your benchmark of quality. However, it does feature Stanley Tucci, who, of course, is fantastic.

ER – straight after Shall We Dance, I caught the trailers for the new series of ER, which prominently feature Stanley Tucci. I think the man is stalking me (albeit in a weird, audiovisual kind of way).

Lucky Number Slevin, directed by Paul McGuigan, written by Jason Smilovic. Apart from having the worst title in living memory, this isn’t half bad. Admittedly, in tone it’s a total Tarantino knock-off, replete with smart arse dialogue (that is way too smug for its own good), and the by now ubiquitous pop/cultural references (this time they're yakking pointlessly about Bond movies).

However, on the plus side, although the narrative takes an absolute age to get up and running (is it just me, or does the first act conclude at the fifty minute mark?), it's a surprisingly emotional ride – a quality that QT seems incapable of or simply unwilling to surrender to. Also, it looks mad – the production designers have seemingly trawled through a warehouse chock full of seventies wallpaper in order to decorate a series of retina scorching interiors.

And of course, Stanley Tucci is great – anyone who can effortlessly glide from high camp to corrupt cop gets my vote (and I bet he sings better than flippin’ Kylie as well).

The ‘Oh Gawd, It’s Christmas’ Factor

Christmas – the time of year where I get dragged to the cinema to see a whole bunch of films I would usually cross the street to avoid...

The Golden Compass – ‘written’ and directed by Chris Weitz. Wanna know why this is currently bombing in the States? Go see it. Or rather, don’t. You have been warned.

How the flaming heck did Chris Weitz get this gig? It can’t have been on the basis of his adapted screenplay, which is so chock full of clunky exposition it actually made me want to punch myself in the face. Granted, material like this is difficult to adapt, as there is a lot of intricate back story and plenty of unfamiliar concepts for an audience to get its head round (and to be honest, I tend not to be a huge fan of the whole ‘fantasy’ genre, if that’s what you want to call it). But starting out with an explanatory voiceover which only really adds to the ensuing confusion is the ideal way to make me start chucking stuff at the screen.

Major characters appear and disappear for no good reason. At least half of the dialogue is exposition (the other half simply being unintentionally funny: Do you want to ride me? Hello! I thought this film was rated PG). Nicole Kidman is about as menacing as a tin of Quality Street. An hour in, I wanted to gouge out my eyes and throw them at people just so I had something entertaining to do.

Stardust – this is one of those films that has you alternately shouting, ‘Huzzah!’ and ‘Oh Gawd!’ ‘Huzzah!’ for the quite amazing Robert DeNiro, who completely steals the film as a cross dressing whoopsie pirate – ‘Oh Gawd!’ for the appearance of Dexter Fletcher. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good actor, but ever since he played a Yank in Press Gang, there’s something about him that makes me go, ‘Oh Gawd!’ No idea why, but there we are.

A load of marvellous old nonsense and about a hundred times better than The Golden Compost.

Enchanted – like, wow. I loved this, and what made it better is the fact that I wasn’t expecting to even like it (to be honest, the omens were not good: the writer – Bill Kelly – was responsible for that pure flapdoodle Sandra Bullock vehicle Premonition).

That said, there appears to be a much darker, naughtier story lurking just below the surface here, which seems to me to suggest that Disney has managed to plane off a few of the sharper edges from Kelly’s screenplay. No matter, it’s still great fun.

That said, my wife laughed at me callously for crying most of the way through (I’ll cry at anything, which is why I can’t watch The Secret Millionaire or any Cancer Research TV advert). However, Sarah managed to spill the entire contents of a cup of latte over the cinema floor, which meant that a throng of super-efficient cinema employees descended on us, making her feel incredibly daft and not a little embarrassed. Vengeance is mine! Or something.

Double Bill of Non-Fun

Spoilers ahead for Vacancy and Isolation

Vacancy , directed by Nimrod Antal, written by Mark L Smith (Christ on a bike, I thought it was written by Mark E Smith for a moment!).

Oh dear. A supposed horror film spoilt by a total surfeit of imagination and a ton-and-a-half of dialogue landfill. Luke Wilson draws from the same acting well as his brother Owen, so it’s inevitable that after about thirty seconds, you want to throttle him. What the devil Kate Beckinsale is doing in this Christ only knows (then again, after having seen Underworld, I think I can guess). It’s unnecessarily wordy, and has a pointlessly long introductory sequence that consists entirely of boring chatter. It’s not even unintentionally funny, so I can’t think why anyone in their own right mind would want to watch it. That said, some of the snuff videos playing in the hotel room looked kinda fun - can I rent some of those, please? There's nothing like a good snuff movie...

Isolation, written and directed by Billy O’Brien.

Double oh dear (changing the subject for a moment, did you know that’s what James Bond’s mum calls him when he gets called home for his tea?). The tagline for this film – It Didn’t Want to be Born. Now, It Doesn’t Want to Die – is terrific. However a more accurate description would be: Alien – On a Farm – in Ireland – Zzzzz.

Nothing happens for an hour until the body of Orla the vet is found – as her death occurs off-screen, we have to rely on the explanation of mad scientist Crispin Letts to fill in the gaps (er, why not just show it? This is supposed to be a horror film, right?). The film then wakes up and goes all silly for ten minutes. Then the rubber hand puppet monster shows up. Sub-plots wave at you feebly and slink off in winsome fashion (who or what are Jamie and Mary running away from?). The ending is telegraphed about an hour before it arrives. Looks nice though.

As a joint production between Film Four, the Irish Film Board and Lionsgate, you would have thought someone somewhere could have sanctioned a few more script rewrites – as it stands currently, the whole thing feels like a second draft. Perhaps they should have given it to Mark E Smith – he’d have known what to have done with it.

Halloween Hangover

Spoilers Ahead for The Frighteners and The Number 23.

The bad ‘films’ just keep on a-flowing...

The Frighteners: directed by Peter Jackson. Why have I never tracked this film down before now I asked myself, plumping up my lumpy sofa in readiness. After watching it, it all becomes too apparent. What an absolute bloody mess.

The central premise is brilliant – a psychic investigator scratches exorcising haunted houses. However, all is not what it seems: he’s in cahoots with a league of spooks doing the hauntings. But from that point on, it’s a downhill slalom all the way. The narrative lurches from one wild incoherency to the next in the space of three milliseconds. Logic is taken outside and given a good hiding. Everyone involved acts as if they are in the midst of some manic Chuck Jones cartoon, but I guess that’s just Peter Jackson’s ‘style’ (if you can call it that).

I am a firm believer (along with Stewart Home) that some things do not bear much critical attention – The Frighteners is one of them.

The Number 23: directed by Joel Schumacher (run for your lives!).

For some inexplicable reason, I was looking forward to this: don’t ask me why – perhaps someone slipped some hallucinogens into my sambuca (either that or I may be setting my expectations a little too high).

There are enough ideas here to fuel at least half dozen bad-to-middling straight-to-video films – however, combining these into one package does not make for a good movie. Jim Carrey (the comedy antichrist until Adam Sandler beamed down) plays Walter Sparrow, a man who becomes obsessed with the number 23 after his wife picks up a book, imaginatively titled The Number 23). The book’s narrative seems to uncannily mirror Sparrow’s own life. Hmmm – I’m intrigued.

What I should have done at this point was to pour the rest of my sambuca into the DVD player.

Sparrow starts to read from the book and off we’re off on an unintentionally hilarious parallel narrative that threatens to last forever. In order to prove that we’re in ‘adult’ territory, Jim gets to indulge in some massively comical sex scenes (which are about as erotic as a Haynes manual), which have obviously been filmed by a thirteen year old boy who thinks he knows what adult entertainment looks like (here’s a clue, Joel: it doesn’t look anything like The Number 23).

Think of something bad that screenwriters do, and it’s here in droves. Voiceover? A veritable landfill of it. Flashbacks? Saints preserve us. Co-incidence? A great big, fucking lazy one. What we have here ladies and gentlemen, is a Chip Smith patented Planks of Bullshit movie! Given that the script seems to have spent about twelve minutes in development, I’m not surprised.

I won’t insult your intelligence by revealing what the big surprise twist is – suffice to say the whole thing was another two hours of my life that I’m not going to get back (is there someone you can sue for this sort of thing?).

Dia-fucking-bolical.